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Saturday, 12 July 2014

A bright object that dazzled in the sky over Australia left people confused. Social media was abuzz with the pictures of the mystery fireball, with users claiming it was either a plane crashing into the ocean or a 'meteor.'

A round object with a burning tail was spotted in the sky over Victoria, NSW, Tasmania and South Australia at about 9:45pm local time on Thursday night.

Airservices Australia spokesman Paul Sadler told ABC Radio that pilots and air traffic controllers also reported the flaming object.

"A number of pilots reported it to air traffic controllers (and said) it was just a spectacular sight of a meteorite entering the Earth's atmosphere," he said.

The "light show" lasted for around 30 seconds, but eyewitnesses were fast to post pictures and start speculating online about what the object could be.

Some of them claimed the fireball was a meteor and others suggested it might have been a plane on fire.

"We received numerous emergency calls from people concerned," Country Fire Authority spokeswoman Andrea Brown said, according to Herald Sun. "People believed they had witnessed an aircraft crashing into the sea."

Astronomers quickly dispelled all guesses and said the mystery meteor clearly had signs of a man-made object.

"The images I've seen show a lot of different colors," Astronomical Society of Victoria president Ken Le Marquand told AAP. "When you get lots of colors, it usually means there are different materials in there - man-made materials," he said.

The Nobel Prize winning Australian National University Astronomer Brian Schmidt concluded that "our fireball may well have been a piece of space junk."